Chop Chop by Simon Wroe Page B

over the restaurant these two had secret stashes, in places no one would even think of looking: behind the mise in their service fridges, in the shaft for the dumbwaiter, underneath the combi oven covered by specially placed gastro trays.
    (The other thing about Harmony: her hands did not bear The Mark of Bob. When it came to women Bob was at once chivalrous and craven, sexist and submissive. During service he never gave her grief, never so much as raised his voice to her. Women were unstable, emotional commodities that Bob did not understand or trust. As he knew from his own beloved and terrible wife, a woman’s will was absolute, and her fury when crossed was awful to behold. For Bob, “The Missus” was a mysterious and sacred institution that should never be disrespected or contradicted. He of all people knewhow a woman could make a man suffer, and even he, the connoisseur of suffering, would not wish it upon others. When his own wife demanded her “Booboo,” Bob became a simpering fool, switching in an instant from brutal tyranny to baby talk. Such language sounded very undignified coming from a first-rate arsehole of Bob’s standing, and in those moments, to the great surprise of all the chefs, we found ourselves wishing for the petty, heartless bastard we knew and despised. This other Bob, this “Booboo,” was just depressing, like a toothless crocodile or a clean rat.)
    Harmony was callous because the environment demanded it. Or perhaps she had sought the kitchens because her character would brook no shit. Whatever the truth, she was the only chef who seemed comfortable in The Swan’s turmoil. Everyone else had about them the look of caged beasts: one-hundred-hour-a-week Dave, jabbering Shahram, shifty Darik, cloistered Dibden—to make no mention of Ramilov the iconoclast, winking at blind horses and pulling fiercely at weak ropes. Harmony alone belonged. It was wrong to say, as I did earlier, that she existed in her own orbit. We existed within hers. Primarily, she belonged because she retained an independence from the place. As I slaved week after week in that pit of despair I came to see how that singular, star-bright quality, silently relayed from the corner fryer, was worth a thousand macho brags. The other chefs might talk about how they were ready to up and leave, how they wouldn’t take any more of Bob’s cruelty, but none of them would do it. Most had no other qualifications, no professional experience beyond kitchens. No life beyond. Some had spent so long in front of the burners that just the thought of getting on the Tube or walking down the street put them on edge.
    Inexorably, as the weeks wore on and we slogged deeper into December, I felt myself slipping toward the same condition. Even to step outside the back door and see the small square of sky abovethe yard was unnerving: it suggested there was something beyond cooking, a world outside the kitchen, and that led the mind down unpleasant lines of inquiry. As Ramilov, our very own Book of Wisdom, writes, fear is the great nut squeeze. The kitchen was all chefs knew. Something made them pick up the knife afresh each day. Something chained them to it. Like flies, they were enslaved to the pursuit of food, to the fulfillment of their urges, and, like flies, their single-mindedness could be read as brainless, as cowardly, or as noble. I, however, had no wish to pick up the knife or suffer for food; I did not care one way or the other about any of it, yet somehow I had become trapped.
    Harmony gave me hope. Dave will scoff and Ramilov will explode with ridicule, but I am not ashamed to admit it: I looked to her with growing desperation. She became a sort of crutch to me, and I gleaned much inspiration from observing the way she held herself beyond the kitchen’s consumptive, libidinous grasp. Yet—and this is the funny thing about it—the more I watched her, the harder it was to leave.
    I must